White County High School Warriors wrap up first week of practice

Jayden Hicks makes a pass on Thursday afternoon. Hicks and Michael Hammond switched out at quarterback in Thursday’s 7-on-7 passing league game.

The Warrior football team graduated a lot of key starters off of last year’s football team, making the month of July especially important this year.

Coach Jerry Lowery just wants to see his team improve each time they take the field for practice, and, thus far, he has seen that happen. As the dead period came to an end, the Warriors went into the first week of work, with one day of 7-on-7 competition scheduled.

Replacing almost all of the skill positions on both sides of the football can cause a team to experience a lot of growing pains. Players are either having to learn new positions or adjusting to being the one on the field making the plays instead of standing on the sidelines waiting their turn.

Practice and repetition are the most important things for inexperienced teams, and the White County High School football skill players got plenty of that on Thursday when they traveled to DeKalb County High School.

“We have a young team this year with some key seniors leading the charge,” said Lowery. “We still have some unknowns, and that is what this week has been good for. The coaching staff has been busy putting players where they need to be and seeing how they react to it. We will continue to tweak our offense and defense while we also add in our special teams.

“During 7-on-7 this week at DeKalb, we were pleased by the play of our guys. We went into the scrimmage with the goal to be able to get our checks right and line up correctly when facing various formations. Coach Trapp at DeKalb County does a great job with their teams’ passing game and showing numerous formations. Our guys did give up some big plays early, but seemed to get in the rhythm of the game and seemed to settle in a bit. We did a better job with our coverages after the first few series. Our offense made some good plays and moved the ball a few times down the field. Overall, as a coaching staff, we were very pleased with what we saw our first time out, but we must continue to improve and eliminate mistakes on assignments. We have to have all 11 guys on the field in unison to stop the breakdowns.”

The Warriors will look to continue to improve this week. This will be the Warriors last week before they can go full pads in practice.